Our wandering path
Glimpse: The Whitney Plantation – Wallace, Louisiana
Live oaks at the plantation's main entrance, which faced the Mississippi River.
Across the south, there are numerous restored plantations preserving and celebrating the opulent history of excess and privilege of the white owners. The Whitney Plantation is the only one that tells the story from the viewpoint of the enslaved people who worked there. The plantation, which cultivated and processed sugar, is less than an hour from New Orleans on historic River Road in Wallace, Louisiana. Its French Creole raised-style main house built in 1803 is described as one of the finest surviving examples in Louisiana. Many of the original slaves on the plantation came from the Senegambia region of West Africa and are honored on memorial walls. Our guide showed us the slave quarters and described the work of a sugar plantation, a dangerous operation that used sharp machetes to chop the cane and huge pots to boil it down to crystals. Slaves who were cut or burned, which happened frequently, usually would develop infections and die. She described the “punishments” they received for different infractions – whippings, beatings, brandings – which also often caused infection and death. The guide also discussed the shift when the African slave trade was outlawed and owners forced enslaved women to have as many children as possible to replace lost slaves. The plantation, on the National Register of Historic Places, was used for several scenes in the 2012 Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained. The gift shop has books of slave history and interviews conducted by the Federal Writers Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration, in 1937-40. On a wall, visitors share their reaction to the plantation with sticky notes, including one that recalls a poem by Aeschylus that Robert Kennedy used in his speech announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
The visitor concludes: WHAT YOU DO HERE IS IMPORTANT, underlining it three times.
Glimpse: Bishop’s Palace, opulence, tragedy
The front door of the Bishop's Palace in Galveston, Texas.
Walking into the entryway of the Bishop’s Palace in Galveston, Texas, you can imagine the rustling silks and genteel voices of high society who gathered here in the late-1800s and early 1900s. The home, also known as Gresham’s Castle, for its first owner, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and considered one of the most significant Victorian houses in the country.
We took the excellent self-guided audio tour, which gives details of the construction, as well as bits of family detail.
The home was finished in 1892, built for Colonel Walter Gresham, an attorney, Civil War veteran and founder of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, his wife, Josephine, and their nine children. Gresham also served in the Texas Legislature. In 1923, the house was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston and was the residence of Bishop Christopher E. Byrne.
Designed by architect Nicholas Clayton, the exterior of the three-story home is sculpted granite, limestone, and sandstone with elements of French Gothic, Romanesque, Tudor, and Classical architecture and a Mansard roof, with turrets and gargoyles. Its cost at the time is estimated at $250,000. In today’s dollars, it’s about $5.5 million.
Two Sienna marble columns flank the entrance hall, which opens to a 40-foot octagonal mahogany staircase, with stained glass on five sides. Fourteen-foot ceilings grace the first floor, which houses the parlor, music room, library, dining room, conservatory, pantry and kitchen.
The second floor houses a living room, bedrooms, and a chapel, created out of one of the Gresham daughter’s bedrooms. It has stained glass windows depicting the four apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, which were hand-painted in Germany with a single-bristle brush to create the finest detail.
Mrs. Gresham’s art studio and the boys’ bedrooms are on the third floor. Windows and doors throughout the house are designed to open and bring in the Gulf breezes during the warm summers.
Made of steel and stone, it survived the Great Storm of 1900, which killed 8,000 people and destroyed much of Galveston. Mrs. Gresham rode out the storm in the house, helped drag survivors out of the raging waters outside her door, and sheltered hundreds of her neighbors. Afterward, her servants said she was “totally wrecked,” and retreated to New York to recuperate.
Laundry, a lost chihuahua and a doppelganger in Del Rio, Texas
The laundromat in Del Rio, Texas, was the lone business in a shuttered shopping strip, miles from downtown. The good news: It was open until 11 p.m. Little did I know I would meet my doppelganger there.
Guided tours at national parks are a rocking good time
Big Bend National Park, at the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert, is the largest protected section of the desert in the United States.
By Tom Nichols
Last year, Judy and I became very big fans of tours led by rangers and volunteers at America’s national parks and monuments. So before departing Big Bend National Park in west Texas, our first national park of 2016, we couldn’t leave without one more tour, this one on geology.
Big Bend National Park: Two campsites, four hikes and a burro ride
A roadrunner welcomed us to the last site at Cottonwood Campground.
As we pulled up to the entrance of Big Bend National Park, the ranger at the gate told us there were only three of 210 camping spots left in the entire 800,000-acre park, and that we’d better hotfoot it over to the Cottonwood Campground to grab one of them. It was 21 miles there by dirt road, and 35 by paved.
“Should we risk the dirt road?” we asked.
She looked at The Epic Van and asked, “Did you rent this?”
Glimpse: Fort Davis – Pride and betrayal for Buffalo Soldiers
A wagon at Fort Davis.
Fort Davis, in southwest Texas, was established in 1854 to protect travelers and local citizens from Apache and Comanche raids. It became home to four cavalry companies of African-American soldiers who became known as Buffalo Soldiers. It was strategically located at the crossroads of the San Antonio to El Paso road, near the Chihuahuan Trail, used by Indians in the area.
After watching an introductory film narrated by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a 10-gallon hat, say whaaaaat???, you can wander the fort to see soldiers’ barracks, the commissary, officers housing and the hospital. Along the way you will hear the bugle calls, for changing of guard duty, sick call, and call to meals.
Exploring the sun: You could put an eye out
Our first live shot of the sun, showing a sun spot on the lower left edge.
Most people go to an observatory to see stars at night. Being contrarians, we went to see the sun. During the day.
It seemed kind of silly. I mean, you can look up and see the sun right?
So as we drove up to the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis, Texas, we didn’t have high expectations. It was a beautiful ascent, with stunning views over the West Texas mountains, and we figured the drive made the trip worth it.
Then we sat down in the auditorium, and Judy Meyer blew our minds.
Glimpse: The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens
One of the intrusive volcanic domes visible from Clayton's Overlook at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute Nature Center and Botanical Gardens.
The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens outside Fort Davis, Texas, take your mind from miniscule cactus flowers to dozens of varieties of sage, yucca and willow, to broad outlooks over volcanic intrusions. In the hours we spent there, we saw three other guests.
The Center is located on more than 500 acres and has three miles of hiking trails, including a riparian canyon. We started in the gardens, which has more than 165 species native to the Chihuahuan Desert, then found our way to the cactus and succulent greenhouse, with its magical display of more than 150 species, many grown from seed.
We took the mile-long loop to Clayton’s Overlook, where a series of well-designed displays explain the volcanic history of the surrounding mountains. Rather than lava thrown from a volcanic cone, much of the landscape was formed through volcanic intrusion, magma pushing up and under the existing layers, creating mounds that later eroded into magnificent formations.
Marvelous Marfa, where minimalism and abundance dance together
The famous Prada Marfa art installation by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, sits just off U.S. Highway 90 about 26 miles northwest of the city of Marfa. You can see The Epic Van reflected in the window, making our own artistic statement.
Marfa, Texas, reportedly named in 1883 by a railroad executive’s wife who was reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, is a city built on history, art and ghost lights.
Year Two begins: Ruins and reflection
A doorway at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.
After many weeks at “home” in Scottsdale, nesting in the guest room at my mother’s, we left the driveway on Friday, Feb. 5, for Year Two of our full-timing adventure.
We pointed The Epic Van, our home on wheels, toward Tucson, the first stop on our planned path from the sunbaked Sonoran Desert to the damp sands of South Carolina.
As we rolled south, I read aloud to husband Tom at the wheel: Blue Highways, William Least-Heat Moon’s tale of driving the nation’s back roads. Although Moon was leaving a lost job and failed marriage in the rear-view mirror, and Tom and I are together, having walked away from careers in journalism, Moon’s travels were one of our inspirations to chuck the corporate life and put our faces to the wind.
Nomads and the civilised look at each other with disapproval and misunderstanding. Why would anyone want to wander the wilderness and live in a tent? Why would anyone want to live in a box and obey unnecessary masters?
Ali, Mostly we’ve found people think it’s really cool. Many tell us they dream of being able to wander the world. Are you a nomad?